31st January 2013: [The Devil and] Daniel Johnston

I was given this album when I went for the screening for The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

Here's the review I wrote at the time:

A critic from an important paper was saying at the screening, "they make films about everyone these days. Have you ever heard of this guy?"
For those as enlightened as him, Daniel Johnston is a Texan singer/songwriter/ artist with a lisp and a tendency for manic depression. He was born in 1961 into a Christian family but started seeing Satan everywhere after he took acid in the mid-eighties. He's perhaps not the genius the documentary makes him out to be, but he's certainly very creative (check out www.hihowareyou.com). Johnston's one priority all his life is to be a creative artist; he has goofed about since the age of ten, concretising the dreams he had as a befuddled teenager. He has the courage - or some kind of childlike innocence - to do so. The soundtrack is excellent and the documentary is sincere, containing extracts of his voice and film recordings. Go see it if you can, but definitely listen to his music.

I just changed some of it because the initial draft contained this silly sentence: "The documentary is moving, thought-provoking and eye-opening."